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Gregory and Laurette approached under the veil of night, but the lights of Merciful Hands flickered on at their master's approach. He withdrew a radio from his bag, and spoke into it quickly.

"I'm bringing a guest. Hold fire."

An instant later, the laser targetting system deactivated with a soft sigh, and Gregory led Laurette to the front door. He tapped his shoulder, and the reflection in the door did the same. He then turned around swiftly, and jabbed at the air with his finger, like pressing buttons on a keypad. The reflection also pressed at the air, but it appeared that the effect was more than it appeared: a soft click emerged from the door, and it slid open silently, inviting the duo inside. Gregory turned back around, smiled at Laurette, and gestured to the door.

"Ladies first."

Gregory's lips twitched imperceptibly as Laurette coughed again, and a worried look stole into his eyes. He beckoned for her to follow him, and the facility seemed to come to life at his bidding. Lights came on slowly, and illuminated the clean, sterile smelling corridors, setting a clear enough path to an open and inviting atrium. Gregory walked to a nearby wall and placed his palm flat against the mirror-bright surface, and almost instantly, a table rose from the floor; it seemed that an intricate system of hydraulics kept the table covered hidden from view, only emerging when called by it's master. A small series of hisses came from below, and the table was covered with a clean, warm sheet; it looked as comfortable as any bed. Swiftly and silently, it adjusted it's form at Gregory's insisitence, and became more like a very comfortable looking chair. Greg walked over to a small marble basin that had emerged as well, and began washing his hands vigorously; he spoke quietly over his shoulder.

"Please, have a seat; whatever is harming you, I guarantee I can fix it. I sense that you're uncomfortable in this environment, but don't worry; rest your hand on that pad, and your worries will melt away. You protected my life, even at risk to your own; I'm not a man that forgets such things."

He smiled softly, and continued to cleanse himself. The pad that he mentioned, situated in the arm of the chair, was linked to the chair's headrest.

The system was one of Gregory's more subtle inventions; tiny aerosol injectors situated throughout the chair would painlessly apply a mild sedative if they sensed stress from the patient. Additionally, the pad and headrest acted as a small virtual reality theater, allowing their user to program the environment, sounds, and visuals to their liking. While engaged in this, their mind would drift away from their body and into the virtual reality, allowing Gregory to work swiftly, efficiently, and painlessly: even the most agonizing of surgeries could be performed without any harm to their host. The magic of technology never ceased to amaze, and Gregory found that, while expensive, the machine's effect on his patients physical and mental well-being was profound.

Finished at last with his cleansing, Gregory stretched his arms out at his sides. In response to this, a small drone arm descended from the ceiling bearing a sterile medical garb. Gregory put it on meticulously, and the drone arm helped him secure it. He donned a pair of rubber gloves, and knelt down beside the chair with a smile behind his medical mask.

"I'll handle it, don't worry. Just try to relax for me."

Another small table emerged from the floor with a quiet pneumatic hiss, rising to meet Gregory's hand. A small dropper found its way into his hand, and after withdrawing some of the blood from her palm, he quickly blotted her hand dry and rinsed it off with a small pen-like device. If Laurette didn't know better, she might have thought that she were at a spa. As Gregory worked, a small scanner descended from the ceiling and began to move about Laurette's body. It was silent, moving fluidly, and only pausing briefly as it searched through her for anything anomalous. Gregory's hands finished with hers, and he rose again, moving towards the back of the chair. He gently placed two fingers below her chin, tilting her head upwards slightly so that her chin pointed upwards

"Would you please inhale for me, and tell me if you experience any distress?"

The scans were complete, and Gregory already knew that this was going to be a long process; however, he didn't trust machines completely, so he preferred to be certain. Laurette would no doubt experience difficulty breathing in that position; her collar bone was cracked, which meant her neck was weakened. That opened to door to a whole layer of problems, but Gregory knew how to fix them.

While it would have been a simple matter for Gregory to just fix Laurette, that wasn't sufficient. This was to be an educational experience, just as much as it was a healing one. Gregory planned to share his craft with her, so that she could understand the ways she had been harmed, and by extension, avoid them in the future.

That didn't mean he would tell her that, of course. Finding out was half the fun.

Gregory listened to her breath carefully. The chair had embedded sensors that reported irregularities in breath and heart rate, and they had spiked when she had taken her breath. It must've been painful, even through the sedatives; Gregory's eyes tightened sympathetically at the scraping sound from within her chest, and lowered her head to a more manageable positon.

"That's because your collar bone was broken some time ago, and it never got to heal properly. The bone shards are pressing against the inside of your trachea, which is what causes that sharp pain. Additionally, that nasty cough of yours, with the blood? The bone pierced your throat. I'm going to have to fix that, or you're going to drown in your own blood."

A look of concern came over his face, and he rested a hand on her shoulder. and looked at her very seriously.

"I'm going to have to put you under for a while, and I'm going to conduct a full exam, but first I have to get those fragments out. Not even a Lugaru can survive with a pierced artery, and the fragments are getting closer with every breath you take. Just let me know when you're ready to go to sleep, and I'll get started."

He had already started the transmission of the heavy painkillers, but he waited for Laurette's approval to put her under.

Gregory smiled, and activated the serum. Her blood would dissolve it quickly, as lycanthrope blood functioned faster in many regards than human blood. He hoped he'd used enough; Laurette seemed tough, so he'd administered a slightly higher-than-normal dose. It seemed to work though, as Laurette's pulse began to slow a bit, and her breathing relaxed as well. Gregory's observation of her neck showed that the slivers had halted their advance, however momentarily.

Now though, came the dangerous part, for Gregory at least: he had to remove Laurette's shirt. He contemplated just going for it, as she was asleep, but he couldn't surpass the feeling of minor guilt, so he called in a nurse. He turned his back briefly as the woman stripped and gowned the sleeping Lugaru, then returned to his work when he recieved the all-clear. He smiled faintly to himself, and quickly set to work.

The entire procedure went rather smoothly, taking around twenty minutes; the shards weren't deeply embedded, so removal was easy, and patching the holes was no great task. Ironically in fact, what took the longest was Laurette's physical itself; it was clear that the woman had never been to a doctor's office before, and likely hadn't even recieved first aid for most of her wounds. Gregory found himself with a new appreciation for her species; either she was a paragon of fortitude, or she was just so damned determined to avoid showing weakness that her mind sublimated the obvious physical problems. It was easily half an hour's work to reverse the life-threating condition of her rib cage, another hour to restructure her pelvis and scapulae, and longer still to isolate and repair all the micro- and macro- fractures in the rest of her skeleton. If Gregory's natural talent or technology had been lacking, it was likely he would have had to place her into a coma, just to keep her body from going into shock. There were myriad soft tissue damages, nearly fifteen different strains of infection in untreated wounds, and for some reason, a previously unheard-of type of parasite. It was likely that she had contracted it early in her life, and simply never noticed it; the thing was rather nasty, in fact, sort of like a highly advanced form of heartworm. Gregory took a moment to appreciate the irony, then moved to extract the beastie. It was a simple matter to incinerate it with the laser, but the problem came when it was already out: it seemed to have done considerable damage. From the looks of it, every time Laurette had shifted, it had healed the damage, allowing the worm to feast anew. Significant scar tissue had formed in her heart, which was bad, bad news. He bit his lip silently as her blood pressure began to drop.

His eyes flared quickly, flickering into their glowing red state as his body engaged it's unearthly speed. It seemed that bits of the worm had entered the scar tissue, and were replicating now; the laser had provoked them into a final, desperate struggle for life. Intently focused on the task at hand, Gregory's hands worked immaculately, stitching, suturing, lasering, cauterizing... healing. One by one, the worms faded into ashes, and slowly but surely Laurette's heart ceased to decay. Exahustion filled Gregory, but he had to finish his task; he sealed her wounds with masterful stitching, and applied his healing serums with loving care. Other than a thin line over her chest, Laurette would heal without so much as a scar. Gregory's final motions deactivated the painkillers and sleep-aids, allowing Laurette to awaken when she so chose to. Unfortuantely, Gregory was worn out by the intense, exhaustive care he had been administering, and he slumped to the ground beside the chair, dead asleep.

He marveled at the irony for a moment; he'd passed out around her at least three times now, and she'd only done so once. A poor track record, to say the least.

Time passed quickly, but Gregory's body rested fast. As the night slipped away and dawn approached, the dreamless, heavy sleep that he was in felt like heaven. At the corner of his subconcious though, the motion on the table registered with him. His thinking mind reached deep into the soft, warm sea of sleep, and grasped onto reality once more, pulling itself from the slumber's embrace. His eyes slid open, revealing only the slightest traces of light from his machines; the interior of the labs allowed in no natural light, just in case one of his patients had an allergy to the sun. Recovering quickly, he rolled over onto his back, stripping off the blood-stained surgical gown and gloves; he probably reeked of death, as the gore on his hands had coagulated to a rusty brown hours ago. Blinking away the last traces of sleep, he climbed to his feet, only to notice that Laurette was also awake. He smiled weakly, and shrugged his shoulders.

"It was a lot of work, but I dare say that with a little bed rest, some food, and a shower, you'll be even better than before."

He pressed a button on the keypad, revealing a small projection screen with a detailed list of all the things he'd found wrong with her, and what he'd done to fix them. It was quite a list to say the least, and Gregory beamed proudly.

"As you can see, you were practically running on empty. If you were that strong in such a weakened state, it kind of scares me to imagine what you're capable of, now that you're optimized."

He laced his fingers and cracked them all at once with a satisfying sound; nothing quite kicked off a day like a good, sharp knuckle cracking. Unfortunately, the sudden agony in his wrist reminded him promptly that he needed to fix himself as well. His eyes watered a bit, and he chomped down on his lip to silence the yelp that he felt rising in his throat. His whole body shivered for a moment, diffusing the pain, then returned to normal. He smiled sheepishly with a laugh.

"Guess I forgot about that part. Eh heh. Ooops..."

Gregory shook his hands a bit, and flexed his fingers, making certain he hadn't damaged any ligaments. Fortuantely, everything seemed to be in place and all right, and the pain was fading from his memory like dew before the sunrise. He glanced over at her, and offered a wink, waving away the comment.

"I'm not a vet, so no charge."

He dusted himself off a bit; sleeping on the floor had it's downsides, to say the least, but when the body cries foul, there are few that can dispute it. He glanced over to the cat-shaped clock on the wall, squinting a bit at the numbers; it appeared that the night had passed them by, and the day would soon be upon them. He raised an eyebrow slightly, and grinned,

"We're quite the sleepy-heads, aren't we? Burning daylight, and didn't even know it. What do you think about breakfast, then a spot of hunt-the-bastards-that-massacred-the-Idolians?"